LINUX NEWS
RESOURCES & LINKS FROM BRAINBUZZ.COM
Thursday, November 23, 2000TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Sean’s Notes
2) Linux News
Torvalds Unplugged
5th Annual Obfuscated Perl Contest Awards
Look out, VMWare!
Will the new TLDs fly?3) Linux Resources
Winmodems...Ick
What's with all the licences?
Cron 101
Fun with processes
Linux and MP34) App o’ the week
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1) Sean’s Notes
One thing that no system administrator can do without is a good editor. Sure, pico can edit a file, but the first time you edit a file with long lines and it conveniently wraps them for you, you’ll set out to find a new editor. pico is not on every system either…
VI has long been a favourite of system administrators. Not to get into the age old debate of VI vs EMACS, but VI is on every UNIX system, so administrators should at least have a passing familiarity with it. If your system has crashed and you have limited access to your filesystems, it’s going to be a lot easier to get VI up and running than emacs.
So, here’s a brief introduction to VI.
VI has two basic modes, insert and command. If you’re typing in text, you want to be in insert mode. If you’re moving around and doing text operations (search/replace, deleting lines), you want to be in command mode.
All right. Let’s fire up VI.
% vi
Yes, it’s that difficult. When you first start up, you’ll be in command mode. Type ‘a’ to start typing. ‘a’ means append, so you will start typing at the spot after the cursor. Type the following sentence:
I really lvoe linux.
Then hit the escape (ESC) key to get out of the insert mode. Oops! We made some typos. Move the cursor to the ‘v’ in lvoe. Now type “xp”.
I really love linux.
’x’ means to delete the current character and store it in the buffer. ‘p’ means to put the buffer out AFTER the current character. ‘P’ would put it out BEFORE the current character. (Yes, VI is very picky about case). So, “xp” together is “transpose”, but is actually two separate commands.
The next thing is that “linux” should be capitalized. Move the cursor on top of the ‘l’ in linux, and type ’~’. The tilde means to change the case of the current character.
I really love Linux.
Maybe you don’t “love” linux, you just think it is cool. Move on top of the ‘l’ in love. Type “cw”. ‘c’ means to change, ‘w’ means “word”. Type “think” and then hit ESC to exit the insert mode. To add “is cool”, hit ’$’, which takes you to the last character on the line. Type ‘i’ to insert, then ” is cool”. ‘i’ and ‘a’ are pretty much the same, except for where they start editing. Hit “ESC” to get out of insert mode.
I really think Linux is cool.
Most of VI builds on what you learned above. For example, to change one letter instead of a word, do “cl”. Note that you can replace one letter with a whole word. “c$” means to change the rest of the line. Replace the ‘c’ with ‘d’ and you’ll delete.
To save what you’re working on, enter “:w” from command mode. You can also specify a filename, which we’ll need to do, so “:w vi.test”. To quit, “:q”. To quit without saving, “:q!”.
’i’ and ‘a’, when capitalized, mean to start inserting at the beginning of the line, or appending to the end of the line respectively.
VI is a powerful editor, but you’ve got to remember a bunch of little commands. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll never touch pico again!
Here are a couple of links to get you on your way with VI:
http://www.darryl.com/vi.shtml http://www.cs.umr.edu/uniinfo/general/packages/viguide.html
Don’t forget about the resources that BrainBuzz.com provides in the boards. Post your questions to one of the Linux boards:
http://boards.brainbuzz.com:80/boards/vbt.asp?b4
Finally, feel free to email me with your thoughts and comments.
Long live the Penguin,
Sean swalberg@brainbuzz.com
2) Linux News
Torvalds Unplugged
In this interview, Linus talks about 2.4’s SMP support and filesystems. He also explains what was behind the Dell server in the SpecWeb bench last month, and what’s going on in the embedded Linux world.
http://www.freeos.com/articles/2689/2/11/
5th Annual Obfuscated Perl Contest Awards
Perl, ”…the best language for managing a hardcore porn website”, can be hard to understand at the best of times. Take a look at the results of this contest, where the idea is to make elegant code that’s hard to read. There is a game of frogger (you’d swear the code was line noise), some CGI, and much more. And I thought my code was hard to read!
http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/obfusc-5-awards.html
Look out, VMWare!
Plex86 is a free emulator, similiar to VMWare. It can currently run Linux, DOS, and FreeDOS under a Linux environment. It was recently announced that Windows 95 will work! Congrats! Check out the article for more information, and a link to a screenshot of the system in action.
http://www.plex86.org/news.phtml?id(
Will the new TLDs fly?
By now you must have heard that new Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .biz, .info, .name, are on their way to a nameserver near you. Did you know that there are some stringent restrictions on who can use them? What kind of an impact will this have on the existing TLDs?
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,40270,00.html
3) Linux Resources
Winmodems… Ick
So called “Winmodems”, where the real smarts are implemented in software, are inexpensive and take care of some of those extra processing cycles, but the software is only available for Windows. If you have one (my laptop at work does) and want to use it for Linux, this resource will help you find the software you need to make your “Winmodem” into a “Linmodem”.
http://www.o2.net/~gromitkc/winmodem.html
What’s with all the licences?
If you’re from the Windows world, you’re probably used to just commercial and freeware software (i.e. you can either copy it or you can’t). In the Unix world, where most things are free (as in free beer), the code itself has varying degrees of free-ness (as in free speech). There’s the GPL, LGPL, BSD, Artistic, and PD among many. This article sets straight some of the differences (good and bad) between the two major Unix-derived OSs - GPL and BSD.
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid /10/18/1154216
Cron 101
Cron is the daemon that takes care of scheduling jobs, like cleaning up logs, running web stats, notification, etc. It’s a system administrator’s best friend, since almost any manual task can be written up in a script and automated. This page explains the basics of cron, and how to get the most out of it.
http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/guides/cron.html
Fun with processes
Now that you know how to use cron, you might want to use it to ensure that certain processes are running. This can be a bit tricky, since you’ll have to get your script to read the process list. Fear not, the shell’s features make this pretty easy.
http://itresources.brainbuzz.com/tutorials/tutorial.asp?t=S1TU782&t n=Fun+wit h+processes&pi=A&pn=Tech+Library
Linux and MP3
Ever wondered how to play, stream, rip, or encode MP3s under Linux? This HOWTO explains it all. There is lots of information on various utilities that can be used to work with MP3s and sound in general.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_sing le/MP3-HO WTO.html
4) App o’ the week
This week’s utility may help you manage your time a bit better. “Pete’s GNOME Time Card” is a panel applet for GNOME that allows you to enter various projects in a drop down box, and a single click indicates that you have started or stopped work. You can then get a report on how much time you’ve spent on each task.
This is very useful for anyone who does contract work, or who wants to know where they’re spending their time.
http://www.cse.nd.edu/~prijks/puters/petesoft/pgtc/
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